Skyfire
by Kiyoko Michi
Summary: Fire in the Sky AU  After arriving on Earth thousands of vorns later, Starscream decided to find Skyfire and give his old partner's frame a true burial. Alone.  The last thing he expected was to find a Spark still impossibly struggling for existence.


**Skyfire**

~Kiyoko Michi

**Summary**: Starscream's finally, unintentionally back on the planet where it all began. And even though he's hundreds of thousands of vorns too late to do anything for his old partner, he can at least give his frame the burial it deserves. But, of course, life's never that simple, and Skyfire's spark isn't as gone as he thought it was. (Fire in the Sky AU)

**AN**- This is just a little what-if in G1 starting soon after they wake up on Earth and before Fire in the Sky takes place. I've never actually seen the cartoon, so most of my knowledge comes from fanfiction. In other words, please forgive any plot or characterization inconsistencies.

~.*.~

Starscream held his reaction in until he reached the blessedly soundproof quarters.

Outwardly, Starscream didn't show any emotion at the news. It had only been an offhand, insignificant statement by Soundwave. He'd rattled off the coordinates of the planet- a normally meaningless piece of information- and it had been all Starscream could do not to let himself reveal his _weakness _to the rest of the ship_._

Only his Trinemates noticed anything. A thread of worry- questioning, uncertain- came to him from their side of the Trinebond, but Starscream shut the connection with a vindictively vicious block and an obvious message. Leave me _alone. _He stalked to his newly rebuilt quarters with a snarl on his face, and mechs in front of him scattered. When he arrived, the door glided closed, and Starscream locked it with an echoing snap.

Then, with an inarticulate scream of rage, Starscream started destroying everything around him. Glass broke with a shattering cry. Metal bent in shrieking protest and collided with concussive thuds. Starscream barely registered the physical destruction, too caught up in the whirlwind of emotions in his processer.

Slag this. _Slag this. _He used every curse he could think of, then started making up new combinations when he ran out for the sheer, spiteful satisfaction of the profanity. He screamed at Primus until his vocalizer gave out for the painful, infuriating _irony _of this punishment.

A useless ship stuck at the bottom of an ocean.

No way to contact the rest of the army for assistance.

And they had somehow crashed on the one planet Starscream had been trying to purge from his memory banks for millennia. The _planet_ from uncountable vorns ago, back from when he was a scientist and the war had barely been whispers on the streets.

They'd crashed where Skyfire had deactivated.

The very name brought back old memory files of his life at the slagging Academy. Made him remember the soft sparked, intelligent scientist he'd once been partnered with. Peaceful times of science and exploration. He didn't know whether to laugh at it all, or collapse under the force of the once-buried memories.

Slagging _Pit, _how had this happened?

A stray thought finally ended his rampage, and he set a stray data-pad back down, unbroken.

They had, against all odds, landed on the same planet where Skyfire's frame had been lost. He'd spent vorns trying to find a way back to the blasted planet- to recover the Shuttle's frame for a proper burial. And now, hundreds of vorns later, he was here, only cycles away from where they'd crashed.

He could find him.

After all this time, he could actually recover Skyfire's frame. Free it from the organic muck of this world and finally give him a true burial. It would be simple to arrange for air time above the Victory and manipulate the schedule so it would be megacycles before anyone noticed his absence. They didn't have any plans for at least the next decacycle; until the repairs were finished on the damaged ship. There was nothing Starscream could do until then.

Starscream refused to stay on the planet where the painful, sentimental memory purges wouldn't leave him alone. Maybe if he could find the Shuttle and give him a true burial, the fragging guilt and memory files would go away.

He brushed off any thoughts of what their _leader _would dowith a depreciating sneer. He was Air Commander. If Megatron didn't approve of his decision, then he could go to the Pit.

~.*.~

It barely took a groon before Starscream had everything arranged properly. Ridiculous, really. Waiting, on the other hand, took an infuriatingly long time after he'd made his decision. He was forced to wait a full orbital cycle before he had enough time for his flight.

He'd been careful to arrange his flight alone. Skywarp and Thundercracker hadn't tried to confront him about his reaction to the planet, and he sure as Pit had never told them about what had happened back when he'd still been a scientist, but they still looked at him with that _annoying, _persistent concern surrounding them. If he had gone on a flight with them, he wouldn't have been able to get rid of them.

So he set out for the Arctic Circle alone.

He could still access the coordinates where he'd last seen his old partner. Time had dulled the memory file, but Starscream unearthed the old information without much difficulty. He let the memory guide him to the right spot, and touched down in the same spot he'd stood so many thousands of vorns ago. The land had barely changed. It was still constantly flowing snow and solid ice, bitter cold and formless land. He grimaced in disgust at the place.

The memories were always there, just out of reach, during the search. Occasionally, he could still fear the phantom sense of wind and ice tearing at his wings, and the terrible panic that had struck him when he realized Skyfire wasn't responding. The half-remembered sensation of crippling desolation lurked constantly in the back of his processer, sometimes so strong Starscream had trouble remaining in the present.

It was a long, long time in the frozen wasteland before Starscream found anything.

Several trips to the ice passed before his sensors registered anything other than the natural debris of the organic planet. He'd carefully organized the sweep around the last spot he'd seen Skyfire, and made sure he was thorough enough that missing the Shuttle would be nigh impossible. Regardless, when he finally did find something unusual, he almost couldn't believe it.

His scanners pinged off of something far denser than the surrounding ice, denser even than the majority of the metals they'd came across on the planet. Starscream's fans stuttered for a moment before coming back online full force. He didn't let himself hope that he'd found him, but he couldn't stop a thrill of anticipation from racing through him. His sensors led him to a part of the snow indistinguishable from the surrounding land.

Whatever it was, it was buried deep within the ice. Deep enough he couldn't get a good reading on it, and far enough in the ground it would take some time to reach it. With a hiss at the aggravating, if expected, result, Starscream took a tool out of his subspace and started to move the packed layers of snow.

He'd barely reached the ice below the condensed snow before the ground underneath him gave way with a loud crack. Starscream let out a curse of surprise, but he hit the ground again before he had time to truly react. The fall didn't even dent his plating, but he let out another short string of curses at the lingering stiffness where he'd landed. Only then did he take in where exactly he'd fallen.

A cave. It was small, barely big enough for a large mech, and clearly a natural hollow in the landform. Completely, utterly mundane. Starscream dutifully recorded the vague spill of light- the entrance- far too his left before recalibrating his optics to the darkness. There were no visible variations, so he ran the scans again.

They came up positive.

There was an abnormality almost directly beside him in a wall of solid ice. The ice was completely opaque and he could only get minimal identification from his scans, but there was definitely something there. Larger even then him, and barely feet from where he stood.

It would be about the right size for a Shuttle build.

For a moment, Starscream rested his hand on the ice. He felt the brittle hardness of the material and the irregular divots scattered on it, knowing he could shatter the surface layer with a single blow. He let his processer analyze the properties of the ice and the flecks of other elements buried inside it. There was nothing Cybertronian in the composition, only the organic world.

Then he picked up his tools again and started to break the ice. He alternated between breaking off large clumps of ice and heating the solid until water ran down the wall in icy trails to pool on the cave floor. It was slow work, all the worse because he couldn't use too much force for fear of damaging whatever his sensors had detected.

The pile of broken ice grew steadily behind him as Starscream worked his way deeper into the ice. It shattered easily, spraying him with miniscule shards of ice that he shook off without thought. Starscream didn't notice anything until he glanced at the next piece of ice, and something other than his reflection echoed back.

Starscream jerked his hand back when he realized just what he was looking at. It was a hand, a _mech's_ hand, suspended in the ice. The metal was a pure white, even after all this time, and red highlights disappeared to the underside of a barely visible arm. The rest of the mech was hidden in the dark substance, still concealed.

It was him.

Starscream's processer caught for a moment on the realization. He _recognized _that hand. The color scheme, the build, even the old, small dent in the side of his hand. Skyfire. _Skyfire. _He'd finally found him… Anticipation and dread warred within his spark at the thought. All this time, and this would be the first time he'd seen the Shuttle's deactivated frame.

Starscream kept chipping away at the ice, more carefully this time to avoid damaging his frame. Within breems, he uncovered the hand, melting the clinging ice from the frozen metal. There was no warmth in the metal, and Starscream had to repress a shudder as he brushed against it.

Piece by piece, Starscream slowly cut the Shuttle free.

The first touches against heatless, unmoving armor sent shivers of revulsion through Starscream's chassis. This was a mech who'd been deactivated for thousands of vorns. This was _Skyfire, _a mech he'd traveled the stars with and had once known nearly as well as himself. He'd been one of the very, very few mechs Starscream had ever trusted. Seeing _his _deactivated frame was almost worse than any of the carnage from the war. There were no energon stains, no deep tears in his frame to reveal his deactivation. Skyfire's frame looked all but untouched. Pristine, in a mockery of true life.

As the breems passed, more and more of the Shuttle's frame came into sight. He uncovered the Shuttle's arm and then the edges of his broad torso, making his way up to his wings and helm. He couldn't bring himself to look at the familiar, slack face of the mech as he worked. There were too many memories in the familiar features and dark optics, and nothing save the frigidity of his armor to suggest he wasn't simply recharging.

Starscream's mind was blessedly blank during the process, his emotional sub-routes falling into a temporary numbness. There was only the steady removal of the ice as he worked to free his old partner. He managed to free a quarter of the Shuttle's frame, then half. His frame was nigh brittle from his internment in the ice, and the arctic air barely warmed the uncovered armor to an almost bearable coldness. It was stiff, frozen in place, and showed no signs of falling naturally out of its carved hollow in the iced wall. The inert frame made it easier to work his way around the mech, but posed a new problem when he finally managed to melt the last connection. Getting the Shuttle _out_ of the wall.

Skyfire's frozen frame refused to bend into a more viable position, and Starscream wouldn't allow him the indignity of letting his frame just topple over onto the ground. He eventually managed to hoist the frame down, grunting slightly under the weight of the large mech.

Vents whirring from the strain, Starscream stepped back for a klik. Skyfire's motionless frame took up almost the entire floor. He'd half to step around it to make his way back to the entrance. Starscream grimaced in annoyance before carefully picking his way around the deactivated Shuttle. His processer was already focusing on the logistics behind moving Skyfire's frame out of the iced cave.

There wasn't even the barest of chances he'd manage to bring his frame back to Cybertron for a traditional sending, but that wasn't much of a problem. Skyfire had once stated he'd prefer a space burial, floating ceaselessly among the galaxy's he'd always dreamed of exploring, to the more traditional choices anyway. He didn't have the materials for creating a true vessel for him, but he'd have more than enough time to prepare the frame. The problem would be getting the much larger frame out of the planet in the first place.

Distasteful as it was, he might be forced to enlist Skywarp's help in carrying him. Now that he'd managed to find Skyfire's frame, he'd only need to deal with a breem of Skywarp's presence before it was done. He'd prattle his ear off endlessly asking about who the mech was and how he'd found him, but Starscream had experience in ignoring his noisy Trinemate and Skywarp would lose attention eventually. Worst comes to worse he could always just lie that he-

A slight hiss echoed behind him- the sound of depressurizing hydraulics. Starscream automatically spun towards the sound, battle systems roaring to life and a shrill battle cry escaping his vocalizer. He was about to demand how he'd been followed, but the words echoed into silence.

It was empty. There were only the close walls of the cave, without even an outcropping or turn to hide an enemy's presence.

Accessing his memory banks, Starscream replayed the noise. He kept his systems on alert, and his wings against the wall. It had definitely been the familiar sound of hydraulics, and too low pitched to be even an echo of his own. Weapons fully charged, he ran a full scan of the cave. Nothing.

Confused, Starscream finally let his null rays cycle back offline. There was nobody else here. The only way a mech could be within hearing range would be through a cloaking device, and he doubted an Autobot saboteur would waste his time randomly wandering the Artic. Or be talented enough to enter the cave without his notice. There was absolutely nothing notable about the spot from ground level; no reason any mech would stumble upon it by chance. But the noise had to have come from somewhere, and the only other thing in the cave was Skyfire's-

His thoughts abruptly stuttered to a stop as his processer made the obvious connection. Empty cave. Hydraulic sound just low enough to fit a mech of Skyfire's size. It should be obvious, but there was just one problem with the idea.

Deactivated mechs don't have hydraulic pressure.

Without the presence of Spark energy, hydraulic systems lost their pressure soon after deactivation. It was a basic fact of their existence. Unchangeable. And Skyfire had been deactivated for thousands of vorns. It was _impossible _that the sound had come from him.

But something _had_ to have made the noise. And there wasn't anyone else here.

Cursing, Starscream launched himself at his old partner, fingers scrabbling for hidden clasps along frozen armor. It didn't take long to find them- he'd long since memorized Skyfire's schematics after vorns of isolated exploration, and soon the armor was clacking aside to reveal unmoving inner workings. Mindful of the brittle metal, Starscream moved the delicate circuitry out of the way more carefully.

All the while, the Seeker was keeping up a running commentary over just how inconceivably idiotic he was being.

There was no way in the Pit Skyfire could still be alive.

Slag, even if it had been the sound of the Shuttle's systems, it would have to have been nothing but a result of his entombment in the ice. Some aftereffect of the solid ice that had kept systems unchanged. He was just being a glitching moron, desecrating the Shuttle's frame for a useless search. He did _not _need to feel the horrible frozenness of an empty spark casing to know he was deactivated, so why the frag were his fingers still buried in Skyfire's chest?

Eventually, he managed to override all the systems and circuits layered protectively in front of the dark Spark casing. His objective reached, Starscream stopped and stared at the precious casing. This was Skyfire's core- his very self, concealed behind the dark metal. Or it had been. If the casing was cold, then Skyfire was undeniably gone, and he'd torn open his chest for nothing. Bracing himself, Starscream pressed his hand gently against the metal.

It was warm.

Starscream jerked his hand violently out of the Shuttle's chest with a shrill shout of surprise. The violent movement forced him back several stumbling paces until he was able to regain his balance again, his optics still caught on the mech's body in astonishment. Skyfire's spark case was _warm._

It. Was. Fragging. _Impossible._

The only way for the chamber to hold any warmth whatsoever would be from a Spark. A present, _not extinguished _Spark. Skyfire had been encased in ice for millennia- the rest of his frame had been completely devoid of any heat. Even if it hadn't, a spark chamber immediately lost its warmth after the Spark was extinguished.

Yet, impossibly, the casing had been warm to the touch.

Cautiously, Starscream approached Skyfire's prone form again. He knelt down beside the mech and slowly closed the casing off from sight. Online or not, impossible or not, there was no way in the Pit Starscream was going to try to force Skyfire's spark casing open to check. That was one line he refused to cross.

There was another way to be sure. Starscream felt along the armored arm for the latch to Skyfire's medical access port, far more carefully than he'd touched the plating before. It opened with the unhealthy creak of ill lubricated joints, but the port itself was undamaged.

Just as he prepared to access Skyfire's systems, Starscream paused. If the Shuttle was still, inexplicably, alive, then jacking into his systems would prove it and grant him access to damage reports to make sure he didn't actually deactivate from the stress of defrosting circuits. But if he was wrong… he'd be connecting his mind to an empty shell. Revulsion swept through him at the thought.

But Skyfire's Spark case had been _warm. _With a grimace, he forced himself to complete the connection. And he was immediately bombarded with_ life. _Sluggish, catatonic life, but it was unmistakable. Familiar. This was _Skyfire, _and his sheer presence nearly overran Starscream's stunned systems before he could reinforce his firewalls.

A rush of disbelieving giddiness finally swept through him. _Primus…_Fifty thousand vorns in stasis, frozen inside solid ice, and Skyfire's spark had somehow managed to survive. It was impossible. _Ridiculous. _But it had _happened. _Skyfire had somehow survived both the crash itself and his entombment in the organic ice long after he should have deactivated.

And Starscream had left him there. The surprised joy left him in a rush, leaving him empty. The old, familiar guilt took on new meaning. He hadn't just abandoned Skyfire's frame on the planet when he left- Skyfire had still been _online, _and he'd left him behind to rust. The Seeker thrust the incriminating thought violently to the back of his processer and focused his attention on the present and his connection to Skyfire's processer.

The sense of Skyfire thrummed along in the back of his consciousness, but it was easy for Starscream to overlook it with his firewalls on full strength. He stumbled gracelessly through the Shuttle's unguarded surface codes until he was able to access the damage reports. As he activated the sequence that would grant him access, his processer was bombarded with the Shuttle's error messages and system damage.

With a muttered profanity at the quantity of the damage, he started sorting through the mess for any critical errors. Some were obviously from the time of his crash, broken circuits and dented plating, while others were a result of degeneration from the long stasis. He was lucky he'd taken to carrying field medic supplies with him. It would take cycles to fix everything.

Silently, Starscream started working on the field repairs that would keep Skyfire functioning as his frame readjusted.

~.*.~

When his internal alarm went off, signaling the end of his time, Starscream nearly tore a hole in the energon line he was repairing at the unexpected noise. He met the reminder with a rumble of frustration. He needed to go. He was expected for his shift in only a few megacycles- barely enough time to return to the Victory.

Starscream stared at his old partner for a moment as he untangled his fingers from the delicate circuits. There had been less critical damage than he'd expected, and he'd managed to repair nigh all of what he'd found. Skyfire was still far from undamaged, but his systems would survive reactivation, though he hadn't shown any sign of consciousness yet.

Starscream needed to return to the ship, and that meant leaving Skyfire unguarded. The thought sent an unfamiliar flare of unease through his processor, and his logic center sent him flashes of possible scenarios. Skyfire deactivating in his absence, his deteriorated frame unable to handle the strain of activation. The Shuttle onlining alone and leaving for Cybertron, memory banks full of information millennia outdated.

The last one at least he could do something about. Starscream closed the Shuttle's armor, insulating his inner systems from the ice, and stood up. On the wall above Skyfire's head, Starscream carved a short message on the wall telling the Shuttle to stay in the cave until he returned. He paused for a moment when he finished, then reluctantly added the glyph for him name to the end.

When he flew out of the hole he'd made entering, he forced himself not to look back.

~.*.~

He spent the rest of the cycle with half his processer constantly on the Shuttle. It ran calculations over his probable state, analyzed the work he'd need to do on his injuries, even brought up old memory files from Cybertron. Starscream had to write a short program to keep his processer on the present, and it still took effort to insure Soundwave wouldn't get a glimpse of the Shuttle.

It was a constant struggle to keep himself focused on the task at hand. His Trinemates had noticed, and he'd had to curse them out several times for trying to interfere where they weren't welcome. Even _Megatron _had noticed his Second wasn't nearly as verbose as normal, and Starscream was convinced he'd enlisted Soundwave to figure out what new plot was distracting him. For once he wasn't calculating his next big scheme, but it wasn't like he could demand Soundwave leave him alone because he was too busy thinking about his old, supposedly deactivated partner to plot something.

When he was finally able to arrange the time he needed for his next journey, he nearly seared his thrusters with the strain of his top speed. The flight felt inordinately long even then. When he finally touched down in front of the nondescript cave, he rushed inside the entrance.

Nothing had changed. The hollow was just as undisturbed as he remembered, with no sign of any intruder. His words were undisturbed along the ice, and Skyfire hadn't moved an iota from where he'd dragged him. For the first time since he'd been forced to leave Skyfire alone, Starscream allowed his processor to fully relax.

The time free of the ice had been good for the Shuttle. Even unmoving, he didn't seem quite so lifeless anymore. Starscream could hear the almost subsonic hum of reactivated nanites starting on the self-repair. The majority of his systems simply didn't have the energy necessary to activate; a simple problem to fix.

Walking closer to the offline mech, Starscream removed a few energon containers from his subspace. Starscream had noted the Shuttle's near-critically low energon reading during his search- a product of his extended time in stasis. It was a miracle he hadn't deactivated from energon depletion alone, but Starscream didn't dwell on the thought.

Starscream had easily swiped the energon, along with needed containers of coolant and lubricants, from the Victory's stockpile. The storage may have been well guarded from the grunts, but there were some advantages to being the Second in Command.

Skyfire's plating opened up more easily this time. Without the ice against it, the metal had warmed somewhat, though the barely lubricated joints still created an unpleasant scrape as they moved. He'd have to fix that next. Touching the Shuttle's lukewarm frame wasn't nearly as repulsive as the frozen metal had been.

He attached a rudimentary feed to Skyfire's systems before he moved to the damage again. He'd brought a few spare parts to replace the more critically damaged lines, but that didn't make the repair job any easier. Time had stripped many of the wires and bored holes in several lines. The damage was extensive, but hardly lethal. If left alone, the reactivated nanites would eventually fix the circuitry, though it would still be better to repair the damage manually.

It was rather disconcerting not to have to manually offline the systems for repairs. Nearly all of them had automatically offlined during the stasis to preserve energy, making the repair job feel disturbingly like working on a deactivated frame.

By the time Starscream was forced to leave again, some minor circuitry was already starting to whirl back to life from the sudden influx of energy.

~.*.~

Why wasn't he onlining?

Starscream glared petulantly at the stubbornly unmoving Shuttle, resisting the urge to give him a swift kick. The glitch wouldn't feel it anyway. It had been an _orn _since he'd started working on the mech, and he'd managed to coax all his systems back to life. Even the self-repair nanites had finished, their active buzz gone.

But Skyfire still wouldn't _move._

Starscream abruptly slumped down beside the scientist, anger draining out of him. He was so _close. _ Infuriatingly, unbearably close. Hundreds of thousands of vorns thinking Skyfire was dead, then finding his Spark miraculously still present. Orns fixing the visible damage he'd found only for the mech to refuse to come back. To have his old partner online and nearby, yet all but deactivated…

Starscream stared mournfully at the Shuttle's helm, his slack expression shifting rhythmically with his fans. Mechs weren't made to survive in stasis so long. If the time had somehow damaged his processor itself… That kind of damage was almost always irreversible, and there weren't any medics left who would know anything about fixing it. Skyfire might never wake up.

Starscream unconsciously reached down to stroke the smooth white helm, then jerked his hand back as if he were touching acid when he registered the sentimental action. Slag… He was getting _sentimental _over the mech. He needed to find a way to fix this before it got worse. His gaze slid down the mech, catching almost unwillingly on the covering to one of Skyfire's port coverings. A niggling idea made its way to the front of his processer.

He could try to force Skyfire into awareness.

Starscream looked vacantly at the Shuttle, turning the idea over in his processor. Skyfire's activation protocols would still be there, buried deep in his automatic sub-routes. If he could reach them, then he'd be able to manually activate the process. Make him reactivate. If that didn't online the Shuttle, then nothing would.

But… the controls would be buried much deeper than the damage reports had been. Medics were the only ones who messed with manual overrides, and for good reason. They had specific programs that let them immediately identify and activate certain sections of code. Without those programs, finding the protocols would be… unpleasant.

He'd have to go under almost all his firewalls, to the very core of his coding. Almost to his spark itself. It was a disgustingly intimate gesture, and would leave both of them unbearably vulnerable. And yet… Starscream couldn't remove the possibility from his circuits.

Skyfire was still in the deepest stasis he'd ever seen. With him unaware, the connection would be completely one sided. The Shuttle wouldn't have any access to Starscream's systems or emotions in return. If he was lucky, Skyfire's consciousness would be buried deep enough that Starscream wouldn't even have to deal with it.

Starscream toyed with the slight indents to his access panel, fingering the latch thoughtfully. He was in the middle of fragging nowhere with next to no medical tools. He'd spent too long just waiting for Skyfire to online on his own, and he sure as Pit wasn't going to give up on the mech now.

"Slaggit," Starscream muttered to no one, and he reached down to hook them together.

The connection clicked into place seamlessly, giving him access to Skyfire's dormant processer. He still had the access codes for the first several layers of firewalls from back when they'd traveled alone for vorns, and to do otherwise would have been not just stupid, but near suicidal. He passed through them easily and into Skyfire's deeper consciousness.

The first levels of his processer were easy to navigate.

With his spark still locked in stasis and Starscream's firewalls specifically reinforced, there was little of Skyfire's presence in the primary connection. There was little of anything important, really. The data was mostly common coding and system controls- things any bot could easily access for themselves. Starscream spent a moment to check the systems for any lingering errors, paying special attention to motor controls and energon flow, but he couldn't find anything amiss.

With the unfamiliar pull of hesitance, Starscream focused on going deeper into the connection. He broke firewalls and disabled failsafes as painlessly as he could, thankful for the unexpected ease with which he broke past the barriers.

Offline, Skyfire was unable to reinforce his firewalls or throw new defenses in his way. Had he been in anything less than stasis, defending his processer would have been an automated response. It was yet another sign of how deep in stasis Skyfire had fallen, that reactions that should have been automatic still didn't activate. His defenses were also far weaker than any he would find now- programmed in a time of peace and not made to hold under an experienced attacker. They deactivated easily.

As Starscream fell deeper into the Shuttle's consciousness, the sense of Skyfire's unadulterated presence that underlined every line of code and data grew gradually stronger. What had once been little more than a hint of Skyfire's personality deepened with every movement, until Starscream broke through the strongest firewall yet and the link was suddenly floodedwith _him._

It was pure, unadulterated _Skyfire- _everything that made the Shuttle himself condensed into the mental link. Starscream didn't even have time to register what had changed before he was swept away be sheer sensation. He was carried into the _essence_ of the calm scientist Starscream had once known- the unending patience, the unassuming self-confidence, his infuriating calmness and simplistic passion.

For a moment, Starscream knew all that Skyfire was.

But only for a moment. Starscream nearly jerked out of the connection automatically at the sheer depth and strength of the other's disposition; the unexpected intimacy of his sudden arrival in the core of Skyfire's being.

The only reason he didn't end the connection immediately was that the Shuttle didn't react at all. Skyfire was still offline, his consciousness buried so deep that he didn't even feel the intrusion. The emotions flowed on unchanging, unreactive and completely unthreatening to his presence. It only took a klik for Starscream to distance himself from Skyfire's nature, and the sense of understanding faded almost immediately, leaving only thin tendrils of memory behind.

There was no question that this was his destination. Shaking off trepidation from the jarring entry, Starscream extended himself cautiously around the spark-deep emotions to the data behind it, wary of getting too close to the emotions again. It didn't take long before Starscream stumbled upon the activation codes. This deep in Skyfire's processer, there was little frivolous coding to distract him.

He activated the sequence without a second thought, waiting a few kliks to be sure the command took. The presence around him immediately reacted to the order. He could feel the sensations strengthening and flowing faster around his temporary firewalls, cavorting around with increasing energy at the change. Starscream half imagined he could feel the faint stirrings of sentience appear within it.

He flung himself out of Skyfire's processer as quickly as he could, barely taking the time to seal rudimentary firewalls in place behind him. Around him, he could sense codes shifting sluggishly to life, and the underlying sensation of Skyfire's personality strengthened in his mind.

Starscream came back to himself with the crash of tension strained vents and stressed circuitry, immediately unplugging himself from Skyfire's frame. He forced his frame, still jittery from the connection, to hold still, and waited tersely for some sign of activation from the unmoving mech in front of him.

He didn't have to wait long.

Within kliks Skyfire's systems were whirling in oncoming activation. Hands clenched and relaxed reflexively as hydraulics and motor controls synced. His frame twitched from the long-dormant systems, but nothing failed from the stress of reactivation. When Skyfire's optics flickered into a steady, _aware _blue, Starscream finally allowed the realization that his old partner was actually onlining to sink in. A rush of exhilaration fell over him at the thought. It had _worked._

Skyfire reset his optics a few times, face twisting in confusion. His arm jerked towards his head, but fell back to the ice with a quiet thump. Starscream didn't concern himself with the apparent failure. He was likely still muddled from the stasis, and Starscream wouldn't be surprised if some of his more recent memory files had been corrupted.

"Starscream?" Skyfire finally noticed him, and his muddled blue optics were staring into him. His vocalizer was hoarse from disuse and muddled with confusion. He'd managed to successfully raise a hand to his helm, and was rubbing it lightly as if soothing an ache.

Starscream couldn't answer him. He was too enthralled by the sound of a voice he'd never thought he'd hear again and what it meant for the mech. Skyfire's processer wasn't damaged. He was moving sluggishly as his systems readjusted, but he was _coherent._ He _recognized _him. Starscream automatically stopped his emotions from making their way to his face, but stopped short when he realized there was no reason to.

He was far from the Decepticons and the war in general. Besides, Skyfire had known him before the war, and had seen him in far more embarrassing situations than showing a strong emotion. He didn't have to worry about his reputation like he did surrounded by the rest of the army. Starscream was a Decepticon, Air Commander, the fragging Second in Command of an entire army, and yet… Ah, slag.

To the Pit with propriety, nobody else was here.

Starscream flung himself down onto the confused mech, for once not caring about how slagging emotional it made him look. He wanted to do it- needed to _feel _for himself the life in once frozen circuits- and he wasn't going to let anything stop him once he'd made a decision

Skyfire felt solid. Real, and _warm_ in a way he hadn't been while still in stasis. He was close enough to feel the Shuttle's spark pulse, hear gears realigning smoothly in his chest. Skyfire made a soft sound of surprise and tensed slightly below him at the uncharacteristic action, but didn't try to throw him off.

"Wha-?" Skyfire stuttered, his processer still unsteady. "S-Starscream?"

"Shut up," he mumbled into his plating. He was comfortable, still basking in the glow that his plan had actually _worked, _and wasn't ready to break the moment yet. Skyfire could survive a few more kliks of confusion.

Skyfire hesitantly relaxed, and Starscream felt him shift slightly until a large hand curved around him to rest comfortingly between his wings. He stroked the metal softly for a moment, and Starscream tensed at the unexpectedly familiar action. He'd forgotten how tactile the Shuttle was… Nobody had _dared_ touch him so casually in millennia.

Skyfire's hand stilled as he felt the Seeker stiffen, and he made as if to sit up. But Starscream wasn't ready to let him move just yet.

"Relax," Starscream ordered, lifting his head up just enough to push him back down. "You've been offline for a while- who knows what damage you've still got to your systems. Probably have some memory corruption too."

Skyfire's optics flickered for a moment as he accessed his recent memory files, then again in surprise. "Primus. The storm," he whispered in horror. He made to sit up again, and this time Starscream let him. He slid off the white frame with a slight, aggravated huff of air. To his surprise, Skyfire didn't let him get far. The Shuttle grabbed his arm before he could move away and started inspecting his frame for damage.

"Are you injured?" Skyfire asked anxiously, and Starscream couldn't help a brief feeling of endearment for the Shuttle at the obvious concern in his tone. "You were right beside me. The storm would have hit you just as hard, and it-" He suddenly frowned, and moved a hand to inspect the edge of a wing. His coordination was improving; almost back to normal. "I- my wing? It was damaged in the crash. How-?"

"I fixed it," Starscream shrugged, batting the Shuttle's hand away. "You've been offline for- a long time."

Starscream caught himself, and he finally pulled fully away from the Shuttle to stare at him. Skyfire looked back at him, confused but no less insightful than ever. How much could he tell him? Pit, how do you tell a mech he's been in stasis for tens of thousands of vorns? How the slag was he supposed to explain about the war? _ Cybertron?_

And, of course, that was the next question out of Skyfire's vocalizer.

"A long time?" Skyfire asked. "How- what happened? How long was I offline?"

Starscream was saved from having to answer when his internal alarm chimed again. He was caught between relief and aggravation- relief that he wouldn't have to answer the question, and irritation that he'd been called away less than a breem after he finally got Skyfire to online.

"I need to go," Starscream said shortly, standing up.

"Go?" Skyfire's optics flared in confusion. Starscream turned to leave, trusting Skyfire to have enough common sense to stay put until he could come back. A loud clang resounding behind him caused him to turn back around. Skyfire had tried to stand up, but his frame was still recalibrating and refused to support his weight.

"But- wait! Starscream!" he called out, still trying to convince his motor controls to function. "_Where _do you need to go? This planet's uninhabited- we're _stellarcycles _away from anyone."

"Not anymore," Starscream replied darkly. His alarm pinged again, louder, in reminder. He didn't have time for this… "There's not enough time to explain now, Skyfire. I need to _leave_. Now."

The Shuttle shook his head in befuddlement. "But… _who _are you going to? Where? What's going on, Starscream?"

Starscream was about to snap back a reply, but a stray thought hit him and he lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Skyfire could come with him.

He could tell Skyfire about the war on the way back. Explain about the uprising and what the Council had done after he crashed. Save anything about the damage to Cybertron for later, when he understood more.

Starscream _remembered _the Shuttle. To Skyfire, it had barely been cycles since they'd been exploring uncharted space in a time of peace. If Starscream asked him to follow, he'd come without question. And Starscream could trust the Shuttle not to betray him in a way he couldn't even fully trust his Trine. All he'd need to do was ask.

Then he _looked _at his old partner, and the half formed schemes fell apart in the face of reality. Skyfire had barely the strength in his limbs to sit up straight, and even then he leaned heavily against the wall. There was so much hidden strength in his frame, but he'd never so much as considered unleashing it- he was a scientist, a _pacifist,_ through and through. Slag, he was still _looking_ at him with that confused, almost childish trust in his optics that Starscream would explain whatever was going on.

He looked _helpless._

Skyfire looked about as far from a Decepticon as it was possible to be. Weak. Innocent. _Pacifistic_. He'd be torn to pieces by the warriors in a matter of orns.

So Starscream made a choice.

"Stay here. There's enough energon left to keep you functioning for at least an orn. I'll explain everything when I return," he said sharply, then turned out of the cave, ignoring the calls of his old partner, and started the solitary journey back to the Victory.


End file.
